TX GOP Rep Embarrasses Texas with his comments on the shooting

So our government can give them to Mexican drug cartels.

 

That fix I did for ya makes just about as much sense as what you really wrote.

 

I agree.

I dont understand why or how it can be legal to own one. I'm not for abolishing the second amendmant, but how can an item who's sole use is to kill a bunch of people and kill them quickly be allowed in this country? I don't understand how people can defend this type of thing. What's the limit? Is there one? Why can't people carry bazookas down the street? Why can't I buy a nuclear warhead? Should I be able to drive an armed tank to work?

Seriously, doesn't common sense have to come into play at some point?

 

I'm not really going to comment on the gun control aspect except to use it as a parallel to what some people do with Islam.

I could go ATW, and post numerous articles about crimes and tragedies that happened because of lack of gun control laws in this nation. They'd include accidental deaths, mass single incident murders like this one that happened at a movie, or the Giffords shooting, etc.

Sure it's the people that did it, but guns were involved in all of them. The acceptance of guns, and the zealous lobbying of guns rights enthusiasts made the deaths much worse than would have been the case had the larger clips, assault rifles, etc. been regulated.

In reality it isn't the fault of the guns, just like it isn't the fault of Islam that some whack jobs do horrible things, and kill tons of innocent people.

 

As a democrat, and avid gun owner. Yes, Yes I will be upset.

 

I'm curious, and I'm asking this as a gun owner, but why would you be upset?

 

silly guy... I'd rather not harm people because I feel bad about harming others not because someone else told me its wrong from a 2000 year old book.

 

Its a fair point, but I think the analogy fails though in that one is a tool while the other is an ideology. While we might never succeed in stamping out the causes of violence, we can do our best to minimize extent of damage. I feel the same way about automatic weapons as I feel about nukes. Though I obviously feel stronger about nukes because the harm they can cause is greater. They are tools that have limited social utility and they are dangerous in the wrong hands. Because we can't know the mind of man, we should do everything we can to limit the amount of damage man can do by keeping the most dangerous weapons out of the most hands. Unfortunately, the cat is out of the box and he will never be going back in. Just like countries will continue to seek out nukes as a deterrent against the nukes of their neighbors, so will people seek out guns to act as deterrents against the guns of their fellow man. Are we safer for it, probably not, but there is nothing we can do.

 

That's the frequent idiotic argument. Conservatives and Republicans support this idiotic argument by creating a system by which everyone has access to mental health services so that we can identify crazy people before they act crazy. Right? What better time for conservatives to push their agenda on health care for everyone. Right?

 

The real truth is that the gun lobby thinks it's a slippery slope. Once you ban chain machine guns that can gun down an entire village, the next you know, they will band hunting rifles.

Fact is, I don't have a problem with people keeping a gun in their owns for hunting or self defense. I don't think it really accomplishes much, speaking as one who has been in an apt when an intruder came in - you don't have much time to run and grab a gun.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with that. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of CHG's as well. Again, I speak from the experience of an argument my father once had with the air conditioning repair man. He went back to the truck and pulled a gun out and pointed it at my dad, whom I was standing right next to. Nothing happened, but why should we be subject to that kind of experience?

Guns enable you to kill easily - I mean, that's their purpose. Problem is, that mistakes or whatever - there's no going back. The victim is dead. In this case, 12 people are dead.

If all he had was a hunting rifle or even a simple six shooter - the damage would have been limited.

I think there needs to be far more stricter regulation on guns. It's not about controlling others, it's about not getting shot.

 

The distinction is that tougher gun control laws might have actually helped to avoid the tragedy.

And I'm not saying it hasn't happened but I haven't heard anything about "the left" blaming anything on the Tea Party on this issue.

 

Half of your friends are with the Tea Party? That seems like a problem that's within your power to solve.

 

I don't think it's premature to link anything about this to politics. Read this.

 

I wish. And treat them too. We don't have **** for mental health care in this country. If the problem isn't the guns... if the problem is mental illness... and I agree it probably is... why don't we start treating mental illness in this country?

A mental health parity act was passed in 1996 that said that all insurance companies needed to treat mental health issues the same as they treat physiological health issues. Sixteen years ago and we still don't have a single proper mental health care facility in this entire country.

 

You have no business writing about what you don't understand.

 

Not only that, insurance companies (or at least mine) don't cover mental health, so it costs my folks a ridiculous amount of money for me to go. And because I'm someone who doesn't life or death NEED to go, I don't.

The public high school I go to has a psychiatric counselor, the attached social stigma is too great (and you have to go during class time).

 

we gotta get these hicks out of office...

 

The fervent lobbying efforts of the NRA is indeed an idiology...

They pretty much won the debate on 2nd Amendment rights. Both parties <3 the guns. So in order to stay relevant, the NRA ups the ante with gun control pledges and report cards demanding flawless scores or else.

 

It was illegal to carry a gun into the theater.

 

Which might then make sense to have tougher gun control laws since that one wasn't able to stop the massacre. Laws that prevent people from getting those types of weapons in the first place might help.

For the record, I'm not in favor of those types of gun control laws, just following the logic.